A blog dedicated to helping you get started down the path toward an animation education and career.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Start: Lamont Hunt

Studio: Freelance Animator/Illustrator

School(s): ·University of Nebraska-Lincoln
(BFA)

·Art Institute International-MN

·AnimationMentor.com

·AnimSquad

“Hey
Uncle Lamont, tell us a story!”

You
wanna hear a story, huh. Okay, how about
a story about a journey and a dream that is still being pursued.

“Is
this story gonna be about you, Uncle Monk?”

What??? No... of course not. Now just listen. There once was this kid who loved anything
and everything animated.

“Sure
SOOOUNDS like you, Uncle.”

Your
killin’ me, Smalls! Now where was I? Oh
yeah. From the moment I, er…I mean,
HE!! From the moment HE started watching
television to the times his family started taking him to the latest animated
movie to hit theaters, this kid knew there was something about those moving
drawings that HE wanted to be a part of.

“This
IS a story about you, Uncle Lamont!!”

Yeah,
yeah...it is. So what…it’s a story, now simmer
down and listen.

I
decided that I wanted to draw better, soak up everything I could find about
animation and do whatever I needed to do to get into an animation studio. But not just any studio. The Walt
Disney Animation Studio was my dream goal.
Growing up, I was pretty alone in my dream. My friends wanted to be doctors or sports
stars or farmers, but I didn’t care. This
dream was mine to have and go after.

Now,
most stories like this would tell you all about how this kid grew up, went to art
school or made some film and got an internship at a studio, which led to a job
as an animator at a bigger studio which then led to his life-long dream job…but
that isn’t quite how this story goes.

MY
idea of how my journey would go was not what ended up happening. I had dreams of going to some well known
colleges for animation, but a lack of money and self-confidence stopped
me. I
decided to attend the University of Nebraska for art; illustration, drawing and
graphic design. I left there trained
as a fine artist, but not trained on how to make money, and not really trained
in how to continue my quest to become an animator. After finishing college, I worked for a
couple years in the Graphic Design world.
Then I went up to the Art
Institute International – MN (AI) for computer animation. And that was where I REALLY had my first
taste of seeing my art “bounce” across the screen. I had done one animation project while at
Nebraska, but it was at this point that I knew this was my passion. I had known that I wanted to animate, but
there was just something about drawing on paper, shooting those drawings frame
by frame into a camera and seeing it almost instantly bounce across the screen that
resonated in my soul! This was a HUGE
moment in my life.

Before
this point, I had only focused on traditional hand drawn 2D animation; CG was
not even on my radar. I got my first taste of computer generated
animation at Art Institute when I realized 2D jobs in the U.S. were getting
scarcer and scarcer. I went ahead and
took classes for BOTH 2D and CG.
When I left AI, I went back into the work world doing some commercial
freelance.

Then
my sister calls and says, “You should come to Taiwan.”

She had found me
a job at a company in Taipei, Taiwan (a company my family had ties with), who
were looking for an animator to help with some upcoming projects. The work was in very limited animation that
was used to help teach English on the company’s television shows. It wasn’t the best animation, but I did my
best to try and bring a higher standard to the project than what had been
produced previously. After a year and a
half of living in Taiwan, I decided I wanted to try again to pursue my dream of
film animation.

So
I moved back to the States and freelanced for a couple years, honing my craft,
but not finding that the work was getting me closer to my dream. At
this point, I decided to finally make the move out to California, hoping that
being around more animation studios, I would find more opportunities. I felt that some L.A. studios overlooked my
potential because I was not local.

So in 2008, I
moved to L.A. without a job, no place to live and very few contacts. This was not the ideal way to do it, but it’s
what I did. About a month out in L.A., I
found a job coaching gymnastics (something I had work experience in since about
age 14). So I had a job, but after some
conversations with some recruiters and other executives in the animation world,
I decided I really needed to get some more training in CG to get my demo reel closer
to something that would allow me to reach my goals. So I
signed up with Animation Mentor.

I
fully submerged myself in school for the 18 months, while coaching full time at
a gym in Pasadena, CA. I really tried to
gain everything I could out of the school and the mentors. In
2010 I graduated, and within 6 months I got a job at the Jim Henson Company. I worked on “Sid, the Science Kid,” cleaning
up motion capture and some small key frame work. When my contract ended, I thought with this
experience at Jim Henson, more studio jobs would follow. But they didn’t. I found a few freelance gigs, but nothing
substantial. And so, I was thrust back
into the“wonderful” world of unemployment.

After
a few months of freelancing, I was
connected to Traceback Studio and the short film “One Per Person” (OPP) they
were pushing into production. I had
seen many other short film projects looking for free animators, but with
Traceback, I saw something different.
Their press release showed an organized group of people with a simple
idea and what appeared to be a visually appealing film, so I applied to join
the team. Now, I want to be clear that I do not recommend aspiring animators work
for free. But for me, these people were
really professional and wanted everyone they brought onto the film to gain
experience towards dreams and goals.
I was brought on as an animator, but because of some technical issues
and delays, I also helped out in layout for a short time. Once shots were being handed out, I started
busting through shots over about a year and half. OPP will be hitting the festival circuit in
2014.

As I animated on
OPP, I continued to work on my own personal work and demo reel, as well as
looking for studio work and freelancing. At this
point, I still felt my skills and work were not at the level I wanted or
needed. It was during this time that I discovered a new animation “school”
beginning in the summer of 2013 called AnimSquad. They were offering online classes and
in-person workshops. It was the
in-person workshop I was drawn to. Also,
I have to admit that having mentors who worked at Disney was a big draw. I signed up and in May of 2013 I became astudent again. I could go on and on about my 12 weeks with AnimSquad,
but I’m just going to say that next to my experience of seeing my early animation
bounce on the screen for the first time, this was the biggest leap toward my
dream and goals. In the first few weeks, I stumbled and made MANY mistakes, but I also
started to see WHY those mistakes were made and learned from them. Nathan Engelhardt, my mentor for the
workshop, helped immensely, causing some major switches to flip on in my
animation, which then allowed me to produce some of my best work up to that
time. I believe FULLY that as great as online education can be, nothing beats
in-person training. I would not have had
the same experience through a webcam and streaming classes. Even though I feel like I’ve moved to a new
level of animation, I know there is SOOO much more to learn in this
industry. As animators, we need to have
those “A-HA” moments periodically in our careers and education. Otherwise, we just become stale and we have
no growth.

So…
this brings us to the “now”. The story
of that little boy who was known by EVERYONE as “the kid who likes to draw
cartoons” is continuing to be written. That journey he started all those years
ago, well, it’s still being traveled.
And that dream he dreamt, well, I’m still dreaming it. And you know what, this little dreamer has
discovered his dream has multiplied and grown more and more as the years have
past. But this dreamer knows it isn’t about just
reaching the dream, it’s about allowing yourself to enjoy the journey and
allowing the dream to morph into things you never would have thought it could. Disney hasn’t called yet, but I know that
call is gonna happen!

Every
good story has a moral or words of advice, and so does mine:

DO
WHAT YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IN THIS LIFE!!
If that is animation, then do all you can to reach whatever dream or
goals YOU have in animation. Your
dream/goal is all yours. It doesn’t
matter what others think about it, it
doesn’t matter how fast or slow you are getting to those goals. If you have a passion for something and you
are on a journey TOWARD that passion, then just do it! I just pray that each of you discover what
you are passionate about and I can’t wait to hear the story of YOUR journey!